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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Usually, I associate prime rib with festive occasions like Christmas or anniversaries. But I found a nice boneless rib roast on sale Friday night so I decided to make it in the middle of summer, "just because". For the price of dinner for two at a casual dining restaurant, I was able to make a nice dinner for six.

Yesterday, Trevor had football practice from 10 to noon on a sunny, hot day. I took my bike and rode during that time. So when we got home, we were both starving. The roast was 9 1/2 pounds and I figured that no one would miss one steak, so I cut off a quick bite for Trevor and me.

I simply seasoned it with the rub for the roast. I fired up the gas grill part of my Smoke Hollow combo grill as hot as it would go, put in my GrillGrates, and cooked it 4 1/2 minutes per side.

GrillGrates help get the most out of my gas grill when I have to use propane. No flare ups, great grill marks.

We'll just call this quality control sampling. Trevor and I ate this straight off of the cutting board.

Now that hunger was out of the way, I got back to that "now a little less than 9 pound" beef ribeye roast. I trimmed off the hard fat and the tail, then tied the roast up for even cooking.

Next I slathered the beef. I used a few tablespoons of beef base and just enough Worcestershire sauce mixed in to make it thin enough to slather on easily. Slatherable...is that a word?

The dry rub was

4 tsp ground black pepper

1.5 tsp kosher salt

1.5 tsp season salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried parsley

Then I put it on the Egg set up for indirect heat at 250f (plate setter in legs up with a drip pan) for a few hours for a slow roasting. Normally I'd put a pan of broth underneath the roast to make au jus but I was out of broth.

It had a nice crust by the end, almost didn't even need the sear.

Here are the cooking times and temps.

Time

Cooker Target Temp (f)

Cooker Actual Temp (f)

Meat Internal Temp (f)

1:30 PM

250

250

38

2:00 PM

250

260

44

2:30 PM

250

260

62

3:00 PM

250

240

81

3:30 PM

250

250

97

4:00 PM

250

250

113

4:30 PM

250

250

131

5:00 PM

rest

rest

137

I pulled the roast off at 4:30pm and then seared it at about 500f for about 30 seconds per side.

Be sure to sear all sides, edges, nooks, and crannies.

I've said it before but the advantage of doing a reverse sear like this is that you get a perfectly evenly cooked roast. It is medium rare from one edge to the other instead of medium well on the outside, medium inside of that and then only a little medium rare at the center.

I had planned on making Garry Roark's (Ubon's BBQ) Perfect Sandwich (from Peace, Love and Barbecue) with the leftovers. He and daughter Leslie made them for us during Memphis In May and they were fabulous. But we had a friend over and then Brett (our older son) stopped by with a friend and every trace of this prime rib pretty much all disappeared. That's okay though, sharing food with friends and family is what it's all about.